


The Scents of the Salts

by Sunchales



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5059384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/pseuds/Sunchales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the House of Black and White, Arya discovers a treasure she never imagined could exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scents of the Salts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImAPotato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImAPotato/gifts).



> _A Song of Ice and Fire_ is the property of George R. R. Martin and Random House.

Throughout her various travels and travails, Arya Stark had learned more about the value of treasure than she ever wanted to know. Men killed and died for gold and silver coins, for handfuls of sparkling rainbow-mimicking jewels. Sometimes women killed for the same treasures; too often, women themselves _were_ the treasures that men killed and died for. Most of all, as far as she could tell, people killed and died for golden crowns beset with gems that mocked the world, for their beauty required the world’s very ugliness to exist.

In the House of Black and White, she suspected that a store of treasure lay just out of sight and then chided herself for the little shudder of eagerness the thought occasioned. Did she know no better even now than to think of treasure with any measure of sentimentality? She was not Sansa to believe that treasure meant a happy ending.

Still, one night her curiosity—be it feminine, as some of the legends said, or merely human—seized her, and she walked down the steps to the chamber beneath the floor.

The temple held a different sort of treasure than glittering gold bursting from oaken chests or gleaming swords hanging resplendent upon stone walls. On shelves stretching around the perimeter of the room lay glass bottles and jars, each full of salt of some color or another.

Arya dipped her index finger into the salts and dug around for a moment—and then the kindly man appeared in the doorway. When a grimace struck his face, she immediately withdrew her hand from the jar.

“These are the salts of absolution.” 

He must have divined her nascent question from the look on her face. “When someone slights the Many-Faced God, he turns to the salts of absolution to cleanse himself.”  


“How does he ‘cleanse’ himself?”

“Why, he bathes in them, child. Our salts react quite surprisingly with water. Have you wronged our lord in any of his forms?”

Arya shook her head.

“I thought not. I advise you to keep your fingers out of these salts, lest you commit some grievance inadvertently.”  


“How would sticking my fingers in a jar of salt grieve the Many-Faced God?”  


The kindly man hesitated. “Handling those salts will do no harm, save that you may spill them and thereby prevent a wayward follower from redeeming himself. But if you were to touch some of the other salts, and they are too numerous for me to show them all to you, any of our god's forms just may blight you where you stood.”

She sensed that he wanted her to vacate this room as quickly as possible, so she thanked him for answering her questions and retreated to her chamber. Throughout the next few days, Arya attempted to ignore her ever-growing curiosity. She observed the townsfolk who came to pray in the daytime; at night, she recited her own usual prayers, hoping that the thirst for vengeance would keep her occupied. But eventually, the call of the salts grew too strong to resist. One evening, she gathered a tub of water from the river outside with the excuse that she had taken it to wash her face. When all the other inmates had gone to bed, or so she thought, she made another pilgrimage to the vault of the salts, carrying the sloshing wooden basin. She would have liked to bring a candle along, but she knew that a certain sacrifice had to be made in order to carry out her plans.

The salts at the front of the vault no longer interested her quite as much as they did when their purpose was obscure. She bypassed them and headed for those at the other end. She lay the basin down in front of the shelves and then reached up, grabbing the first bottle of salt that her fingers brushed. 

Her heart pounding, she uncorked the bottle and poured its contents into the water. The aroma that rose to her nostrils reminded her of a forest: damp earth and fresh pine. 

The scents pervaded the air for the next several seconds. Just as she was about to leave the room in disappointment, Arya heard a moaning tenor voice: 

_"What do you require of me?"_

Arya stumbled slightly. She knew how to address men who looked to use her wrongly, but no one had taught her the protocols for speaking to a ghost.

"Ser," she said as she knelt down, "I seek only to know you."

" _Then you will, for I have nothing but my stories to extract_." 

The stone floor soon became uncomfortable, so Arya shifted from her knees to a cross-legged position. She listened to the ghost retell his account of failing to flee from a pursuer who brought him to the headsman for stealing bread.

When the grim tale ended, the revenant's voice ceased. Arya sat in the darkness and blinked before getting up to withdraw another bottle of salt from the shelves.

The night continued with a seeming eternity of tales. She met a sea captain who set the braids of his beard on fire when assailing ships, a lord who drank wine from the skulls of his slain foes, and a man who called himself simply Dirk the Violator. Even the men who had less colorful life stories fascinated her: a horse trader whose wife surprised him by eloping with a wandering minstrel, a cat-breeder who nailed dead mice and rats to his walls so his feline company could play with them perpetually, a ferryman who told stories ranging from mild saltiness to outright bawdiness about his passengers. Most of the spirits she consulted had little of great significance to say, but she listened in fascination to each and every one.

As drowsiness began to tug on her eyelids, Arya interrupted the last spirit of the night, an old woman who had died in a baking accident.

"How did the brethren of this temple find you all, madam?" 

A faint laugh rose from the cold basin. _"That is their secret, child...and if they don't have your blood for this, they will for finding that out."_


End file.
